Reflections
by RazeTora
Summary: 15 years after the infection ended, humanity is finally getting close to normal. Two friends reunite and try to retie some old relationships as everything else tries to pick up the pieces.
1. Sunset

"_Spit into the petri dish, sir."_

_ "My momma told me spittin' was rude, mister."_

_ "Sir, this is for the sake of the people. Please spit." The young man looked up at the worker in front of him, mask on tight and hand extended, gloved. "After that, you can move along." He frowned, and spit reluctantly, just like many before him._

_ "Well, if you say so, man. Can me and my friends go now?" He looked around, two older men behind him who had also been subjected to the tests._

_ "Wait here. CEDA will be here soon to brief you and take you to your next location."_

_ "Thanks...I suppose."_

* * *

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"So when did they get married?" Nick sat on the porch, a much nicer suit than the one he'd worn many years ago.

"Man, a while back. Musta been ten years now! Shoot, they invited you. I was feelin' pretty down when you didn't show." The older man surveyed the sun setting over the Georgian land, then looked to the man next to him on the porch.

"I moved around a lot then. Things were crazy, I'm sure you remember. I doubt the invitation would have hit me. I probably woulda gone if only to piss you off."

"Nick, don't be silly. 'Sides, you'll see them later in the week. Hopefully we can make up for lost time then, yeah?" He gave an optimistic grin. "Or you can, anyway."

"I never did like that punkass." He swung back and forth on the porch swing idly, his actions going against the serious but dubious expression on his face. He didn't look at Ellis, he just kept swinging slowly, the sunset unraveling before him. "But I do like Rochelle, so..."

"That's the attitude ya gotta have. The friend of my friend is my friend!" Nick turned to glance at him, raising an eyebrow.

"Ellis, really?"

"What?"

_Six months after the infection first broke, the president got on television. The now severely diminished population watched on repaired televisions and even using old radios found in their take-backs of their homes. _

_"Ladies and gentlemen, I would like to commend you all for your immense strength in this stressful time. CEDA continues to work towards analyzing the proper medications for creating a vaccine for this.." he paused, as if trying to find the right word. He was obviously not on a script here. No one really was anymore. "..flu. I've been told any left over infected should be eradicated immediately, and reported to your nearest law enforcement for important information gathering. But, on the whole, I've received a debriefing that the majority of the infected are gone. I must stress that any immune and carriers try to do your best to help reconstruct our great nation. We are not down. We are still here. We made it through this. We can make it through the next phase. Be brave. Please be brave." _

_ Seven people watched from detainment facilities in fascination and the slightest trace of fear._

* * *

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"Man, she was pretty but I think she just wanted free car repairs, y'know?" Ellis spooned beans out of the can and into a bowl. "I thought she was a sweetheart, but every day she was comin' in, 'El, can you fix my muffler?', 'Babe, can you check my engine?' I got under the hood of that car more than I got under the hood'a her!"

Nick laughed quietly to himself, then looked to his empty plate. "When am I getting fed, Ay-lus?"

"Now you cut that crap out or you ain't gettin' shit." He put the beans on the table and then the hot dogs.

"Gourmet food, huh?" Ellis smiled, but cocked an eyebrow. "Hey, hey, fine. I'll eat it. But I just might complain."

"Sure ya will, Nick." Ellis began eating. A silence sat between then briefly as they chewed. Not often did two men sit down to dinner alone together in their circumstances, let alone a hick and a conman. "So you meet any fine women durin' your travels, hm?" He said, chewing his beans.

"Don't talk with your mouth full, kid, it's rude. Anyway, I wined and dined a few chicks, brought 'em back to whatever hotel I was at and had my fair share of good times. Lots of ladies had questions. You'd be surprised how interesting some of their stories were. People were really sheltered at that time. I mean, this one girl? Spent the whole time pretty much sitting in a bomb shelter her family had from the cold war. Crazy. They pretty much survived eating shitty bachelor food like this."

"Oh, that ain't nice."

"Best meal I ever ate, mhm."

"Now tha's not cute, Nick."

"Whoever said I wanted to be cute?"

_ "Okay, you're good." The man said, taking the syringe away from Rochelle. She winced, rubbing the spot on her arm where the series of injections had been. "I'm sorry, ma'am, it's protocol. For your own good."_

_ "I know, I know...you just get tired of being poked and prodded and vaccinated all the time."_

_ "You're due for discharge soon." Rochelle's eyes widened slightly. _

_ "Really? I mean, really? You guys have screwed with us before." There was a pause as the CEDA agent disposed of the needle, carefully arranging some petri dishes next to a stack of files on Rochelle. _

_ "Yes. You're now considered stable. You're still technically a carrier, but we've found a way to keep it from being active. It'll stay in your system, but you won't be able to infect anyone. It'll stay in you until we can find a way to fully destroy it. It got some good results in earlier carriers." He scribbled some things onto his clipboard, thick with data and notes. Rochelle got off of the patient's table and pulled the sleeves down on the regulation clothing the carriers were given under observation and testing. They'd confiscated all the clothes they'd had during the infection fights. He glanced up at her, as she looked at him expectantly._

_ "I can't stress this enough, though, ma'am. Be very careful who you associate with. Sharing drinks? Do it with another carrier. Kissing? Another carrier. Anything with exchange of bodily fluids, try to keep it with a carrier. So far there's been nothing showing it can spread at this rate, but we can't take any chances. And make sure the carrier is stable. Shouldn't be too hard, though, as long as we've released them, they should be clean."_

_ She nodded slowly. How fast things had changed. _


	2. Burger Tank

"_We have to break up, Ellis." The young dark-haired girl sat at the cafe table, looking like what she thought was a cliché. The mechanic's face fell._

_ "Z-zoey...What...I thought what we had was great! We seemed so happy!...I was happy..." He mumbled the last bit. He bit his lower lip hard in sadness._

_ "It was, really.." She couldn't look him in the eye. "It was, Ellis. But..when I'm with you..when you touch me...I just..remember it all." She said softly. She was hurting. _

_ "But..but..you hang out with Francis 'n Louis still! Rochelle too! They don't give you the heebie-jeebies, do they? Or are you runnin' off on us.." A wince trailed at the end of his sentence, realizing he sounded a bit cruel. She remained unfazed by it, but still looked upset._

_ "Ellis..it's different. We were intimate. They're my comrades. Being close like this is hard. It was kind of easy at first, but it just got harder. Please don't take this personally." She paused. "I love you very much. Just...not like that. Not anymore." Ellis flinched as his heart broke._

_ "Well..we can still be best friends, right?" Zoey smiled, looking him finally in the eyes through a mist of tears shrouding both of them._

_ "Of course."_

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Coach hadn't been back to Georgia in ages. He said he needed time to recuperate from the incident. It was sad, since he'd always been so strong in the face of all the adversity and tragedy of the battles. But no one is perfectly brave. But Ellis had dragged him back. Ellis had that effect with people.  
>"So, where you guys taking me?" He said from the passenger seat of Ellis' beat up car.<p>

"You'll see!" Ellis chirped. Nick sat in the back seat, knowing full well where they were headed, but not nearly as surprised. "So how was California?"

"Depressing. At first, anyway." Coach replied. "I went there once when I was in college. Comin' back after all that shit, man, it was tragic. Buildings were messed up, people always looked sad. The sun was shining but nothing else was. The more I stayed there, though, things brightened up a bit. My younger brother let me stay with him for a while. We both talked about how amazing it was that we got out. We talked about how it was sure nice of our daddy to pass down that gene to keep us from turning.." He looked down solemnly. "I was startin' to get settled too, then this one over here gets me to come back."

"Stop yer whinin', we're here." Ellis said happily. Coach looked up and gasped slightly. Nick chuckled at the reaction.

"Shiiit! They rebuilt Burger Tank!" he almost shouted. "Aw, man, suddenly I'm not so up for whining about comin' back!"

"Just recently brought it back." Ellis said, "'For popular demand n' such. I reckon the food might not be as good, but hey. You deserve a day out, eh, Coach?"

_Rochelle stared down at the white stick in her hand, sweat on her brow. Francis walked around in no particular direction in the hall outside the bathroom. "How is THIS one of the most tense moments we've been through!" he growled. _

_ "Oh, will you hush up?" She hissed back at him. "This is more my problem than it is yours!"_

_ "Problem? Is THAT how you see it?"_

_ "We didn't exactly plan to-"_

_ "Rochelle, just read it!" Her eyes, large and nervous, trailed down to the item she held. She read the small screen carefully, almost in disbelief. Francis turned away, apprehensive. The silence hung in the air for a while until he turned in exhaustion from worry. "What's it say dammit!" he finally snapped._

* * *

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"Okay, Coach. Bacon burger, fries, orange soda, and apple pie. Our treat. Eat up."

"_Our _treat?" Ellis smiled sheepishly at Nick. Coach looked beyond pleased. The mechanic unwrapped his own food, smaller than Coach's of course, slowly. The eldest man bit into his burger happily, savoring the return of his beloved fast food chain.

"Mmmm-mm! Damn, Ellis, you were right. It's not the same. It's much better!" He ate well, but politely. Nick nursed his cola idly, happy Coach was happy, but altogether a bit bored now that the spectacle of it was worn off. "I can't thank you enough for this, guys. Most people out in California never even heard of this place."

"They only rebuilt it 'bout a year and a half ago. People 'round here started to miss getting' their arteries all clogged up." Ellis joked, laughing with a mouthful of fries.

"I don't blame 'em." Nick looked around and stood up from the table.

"I gotta take a leak." he announced, striding away and towards the bathroom. Everything looked shiny and new. If you'd been inside the Burger Tank and only the Burger Tank, you'd never even know there had been a zombie apocalypse a few years back. He entered the restroom and relieved himself, surveying the area. The south was so foreign to him, in this state anyway. After all the time he'd spent up north post-infection, he'd pretty much gotten used to picturing it as a depressing zombie-filled wasteland. After zipping his pants back up, his eyes froze on something that made his heart thud.

A small retro-looking sign sat near a hand dryer with the restaurant name emblazoned on it proudly and cheerily. Under the word "Tank," however, was a crudely scribbled drawing of a massive, muscly inhuman creature. Nick felt a lump in his throat. This was definitely drawn by some post-infection preteen. The drawing pretty much gave the air of someone who'd never seen or experienced the feeling or even the sight of a tank other than the artist impressions in the textbooks. But as he looked at it, the conman felt all the memories flooding back hastily. All the times he got pummeled by those beasts, all the times he had to shoot them down or face who knows what terror. All the times he was incapacitated by one or had a car tossed at him.

He went to a nearby toilet and vomited.

_Nick stared down at the prescription the doctor had given him. What bullshit, he thought to himself. What a complete and utter turd. He was fine. He'd survived the freaking apocalypse. What did he need this doctor's spiel for? Nothing, that's what. The paper got tossed in the trash as he took out a deck of cards he'd planned to use at poker that night. The conman would be fine on his own, he was sure of it. _

_ "Post-traumatic stress disorder," what did it even mean anyway?_

_ Just medical bullshit._

* * *

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"So they're doing well, then?" Coach said as they drove to the hotel he was staying at.

"Last I remember, they were doin' just fine. They got good heads on their shoulders, I wouldn't worry. Every time I see 'em, they're lookin' just a bit more put together. I s'pose it's 'cause they got each other that they went on so long." Ellis stared at the long expanse of road ahead, dotted by occasional shops and lines of homes. There was a beat between the three men. "It..it don't always work out like that, though.." Coach put a hand on his shoulder.

"We know, Ellis, just try to move on."

"I know, I know...Nick, how you holdin' up back there? You didn't eat nothin' outside of that soda, man." He glanced briefly to the backseat, then took his eyes back to the road.

"M'fine, Overalls. Just not feeling too hot. Those damned beans got me, I bet."

"Hey! I ain't never got sick from eatin' my cooking. Well, except for that one time me an' Keith tried to make that orange duck stuff. We figured that a goose would work just as fine, so we went down to the pond to try an' chase one down but, ah, you ever heard the phrase wild goose chase? Man, that wasn't wild, that shit was CRAZY! Anyway, I didn't get sick from the food so much as the runnin' after a pissed off goose, then it ran after us..."

Nick shut his eyes as the mechanic ranted on, letting the cheerful drawl of his voice relax him a bit. He attempted to ignore the tightening in his chest that still hadn't let go. His bathroom episode hung in his mind.

_"Here. Eat up." _

_ Nick, Coach and Francis all sat at a table, a covered-up CEDA agent placing some nasty-looking food in front of them. They all immediately dug in anyway, not used to having semi-normal food readily available._

_ "Tastes like shit." Nick mumbled._

_ "Better than whatever we found out there. I was about ready to start thinkin' about what jockey meat tasted like."_

_ "I was ready to start thinking about what Louis meat tasted like." Francis retorted. They ate nonetheless with steady fervor for their meal. CEDA fed them and kept them with a place to stay as long as they were subject to their little tests. Not like they had much of a choice, but even if they could go free, what would they come home to? Zombie-ravaged and flame-burnt houses._

_ Coach looked up thoughtfully after the agent left, then to his two fellow survivors. "What do you think they're gonna do to us, guys?" Nick and Francis both sat silently chewing._

_ "I dunno." Francis finally replied. "Maybe shoot us or sell our hides at some kind of sick Carrier Carnival."_

_ "Oh, shut up." the conman snapped. "Coach, nothing's gonna happen to us. They're gonna test us and let us go."_

_ "Just like that, huh?"_

_ "Just like that. And it'll feel like nothing even happened."_


	3. Rory

_ The first full recovery from the infection came four years after it ended its reign of terror. There was a biological symposium held in Louisiana, the location specific for this. They showed a video over two weeks of a type of infected mutation known as a "witch" to the survivors who'd fought her in the past. She sat weeping in the cage and if a light was shone on her she lashed out against the close bars. _

_The videos began to lapse between the days of each week. First, her crying spaced out in time intervals. Then, her skin began to cease its gray clamminess and take on a more peachy color. Then, her hair began to grow in its previous ginger color from the roots. At the end of the first week, she spoke a handful of words in English. Every day she'd been given a set of three injections, all meant and measured carefully to rehabilitate her._

_ People at home watched the televised symposium carefully, nervous it had someone gone wrong by the head scientist's solemn tone. At the end of the videos, he raised the screen and looked back to the crowd. "We understand many of you are waiting with bated breath to see how this experiment ended. Please welcome our previously infected patient, now rehabilitated." A redheaded girl in finely pressed and washed close stepped out on stage and smiled at the crowd. The biologists all gasped and clapped in amazement. Her hair was still slightly white at the tips, an after-affect. "Her mind is growing more and more in tact every day. We would like to thank her for her patience." He turned to the girl and gave her a small smile._

_ She cried in joy at the applause from the audience. She would from them on be known to the news media as the Revolutionary Redhead. _

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"Uncle Ellis!" the young girl cried, hugging Ellis round the waist.

"Hey there, kiddo! What's goin' on here, huh?" He bent down to her level. "Man, you're getting' real tall! Might be as tall as your daddy someday!" Gentle light brown curls fell around her face, her skin a healthy tan color.

"Daddy's too tall for me, Uncle Ellis!" He scooped up his pseudo-niece in his arms and carried her over to where her parents stood in front of the house. "Ahh! Heyyyy! I can walk, you know!" He laughed along with her giggling.

"Man, I cannot believe you are already eight! You kids sure do grow up fast!" Rochelle smiled at her daughter, still being held lovingly by Ellis. "Man, you better be coming back to my house when I'm old and wrinkly to help me cross the street n' stuff." Rory squirmed in his hold, giggling, until he let her down.

Coach and Nick got out of the car and went up to the trio and child standing in front of the nice-looking home.

"Well, well, look who the cat dragged in!" Rochelle said, a big grin plastered on her face. Coach embraced her in a long hug. "Aw, Coach...where the hell have you been?"

"Away, but I sure am glad to be back, babygirl." They let go and she looked to Nick, watching the child with an odd fascination. "This one, though? I'd like to hear his excuse."

"I drifted." Nick replied simply. His eyes went to Rochelle, and finally he slowly walked over to her and gave a smile. "Nice to see you again, Ro." Her face softened.

"Likewise." The small child was at Francis' side, clinging to one of his legs. Her large brown eyes were trained to Nick. She looked scared, but interested.

"Who's this, Mama?" Rochelle took her child's hand, and led her over to Nick.

"This is Mr. Nick. He was my friend when everyone got sick. Like Uncle Ellis. And this is Coach. He was another good friend to us. We all kept each other safe. We're very close." Her words were gentle and kind. Rory gave a small wave. Coach grinned and waved back, but Nick simply stood there, raising an eyebrow.

"Aw, hell, Rochelle, come inside. We look like animals all standing outside like this."

"Tch," Rochelle snapped. "Language, Francis. In front of the kid."

_Bill received a veteran's funeral. The few soldiers who could manage to come in the area all stood by the grave. There were no remains, just a headstone. Zoey wept, all the wounds opening up inside her again. Louis looked down solemnly, obviously in pain. Francis just looked on. There were flowers scattered all around, mostly from the five survivors who had come. Coach was in another state. Nick was who knows where. Zoey was angry._

_ "Why couldn't they come!" she hissed as they stood around. _

_ "Zoey, relax..I'm sure they had reasons." Louis sad, trying to keep her calm. _

_ "It's not fair..Bill deserved better than this. So much more.." She cried into her hands. "He saved us. He saved us all!" _

_ "C'mon, let's go walk. We need to shake this off. Let's go, Francis." He led away a crying Zoey onto a dirt path near the graves. _

_ "I'm gonna stay here a minute." Louis nodded and left the ex-criminal standing there, just him and Bill now. "Ah...I'm not sure how to say this, but..thanks, Bill. You saved our asses. We stayed on the island until it all blew over, great idea..Only a few infected there. Knocked 'em all back to hell. You freaking genius." He paused. "I went back when they let us start going back to our homes. I wanted to see if you were...still there. I wanted to bring something back for you." He swallowed. "Or of you. Your body wasn't there, though..I was pretty pissed off. I guess those fuckers took it or something. Who knows..But..I did find this." He took a green beret out of his pocket, and unfolded it slowly. He placed it on top of the grave gingerly. "I wish you could see it, man. Things are just starting to be normal again." There was a beat as he tried to piece together thoughts. "Hope it's nice over there, Bill." _

* * *

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"Hey, little miss, don't you go causing trouble today." He said, seeing Rory take out her hula hoop. "Play with the other toys, I don't want another mess in this house." They all sat on the various seats and coaches in the living room. The house was great on the inside, they'd all agreed.

"It's mighty nice in here." Ellis stated matter-of-factly. Rochelle giggled.

"You say that every time you come here, Ellis." Nick looked around, the furniture and construction impressing him more than he'd thought.

"How'd you afford all this? He asked.

"Well, Nick, after we all got back to work, I got promoted pretty fast. Called me 'tenacious.' I think it's just because I did so well in the infection instead of hiding from place to place like some people. But regardless, we started doing well. Francis started selling bikes. There's a pretty good market for them over here, and he likes lookin' at them." She smiled as Francis rolled his eyes, looking slightly embarrassed. "Altogether we have it pretty good right now." She looked to Rory, playing with some pony toys in the corner, mumbling little stories about them to herself.

"Looks good. I'm not surprised, you always had your stuff together. Vest man on the other hand..."

"Shut your trap, Colonel Sanders." He said gruffly. "I killed too many zombies to get disrespected by you." He took a swig from a beer bottle he'd been holding. "I'm raising a kid and holdin' up without stealing anything. You got a problem with that, you take it somewhere else. I probably killed more tanks than you'd even seen."

Tanks. Nick remembered the drawing he'd seen in the bathroom. A snap went of in his mind, and he felt his chest tighten again slightly.

"I mean, shit, I remember this one time, a witch cornered me and was tearin' at my gut like she wanted my appendix for breakfast. Crazy bitches. Then, some boomer puked all over me and I had, like twenty common infected all over my ass! I tell ya, brother, that shit makes you tough." Rochelle slapped him lightly.

"Language!" Nick's breath hitched and he stood up.

"I need some air."

_ "I can't believe it." Francis mumbled to himself. _

_ "It's gonna be a girl." his wife said softly._

_ "I can't believe it."_

_ "What should be name her?"_

_ "I can't believe it."_

_ "Francis, look, I can just take this baby on my own if all you're gonna do is mumble in disbelief to yourself." _

_ "I just..can't believe it.."_


	4. Suits

_ Ellis put on a suit. He felt like an old friend of his as he adjusted the tie. He put on a gruff face and stared at his reflection, trying to eradicate his drawl and speak "properly," as the television producers had said it._

_ "Maybe the helicopter, maybe it's made of chocolate." He mumbled sternly, immediately breaking into giggles at his own faux seriousness and his choice of quotation. "Hey, Overalls." He said, putting on his imitation of the gambler yet again. "you should tattoo that girl's name on your butt." He chuckled again. This was too fun. He didn't even notice the female assistant poking her head in._

_ "Um..Sir? Your interview is on in ten." She looked severely confused._

_ "Thank ya kindly, ma'am." He said, accent coming back._

_ "Sure.." She closed the door, the sign on it reading "INTERVIEWEE ROOM: INFECTION DOC." Why did he have to wear a suit? Weren't interviews supposed to show the real you anyway? He was almost nauseous from the smell of cologne. This wasn't him. _

_ He looked at himself in the mirror, doing his impression one last time._

_ "You're screwed up in the head, you know that?..."_

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Nick was breathing heavily, practically panting in the yard of Rochelle and Francis' house. Why was he feeling like this? It was insanity. He felt like he was gonna choke and collapse right there in the yard. He felt like he was gonna be..gonna be..incapacitated. His thoughts stumbled over each other clumsily as he tried to get a grip. Why did he start to lose it every time he started thinking about zombies in too much detail? He started growing lightheaded. The conman spotted a bench swing in the yard, and made his way roughly over to it and sat down. He leaned back and shut his eyes.

"Ugh..what the shit, man.." His chest hurt, his head was spinning. This happened every time and it only got worse all the time. Every time those zombies came up. If it was brought up in passing, he could take it. But if someone got into it or if he thought too much about it..it was scary, almost. And Nick hated to admit he got scared of things. No one knew but him. He hadn't even told Ellis, but this had been going on for years.

"Excuse me," a small voice pierced the tension he was swirling in. He opened his eyes quickly to see Rory holding a stuffed animal staring up at him. "Are you okay? You look kinda sick." She sat on the bench next to him. "I could ask Mama to make you soup and you can get some bedrest. Dad does that for me when I get sick. You can stay in my room, I don't hafta go to bed until nine thirty. Eight thirty on school nights, but it's summer now!" Nick stared at her as she ranted. He could see the influence Ellis had on her.

"I think I'll be fine kid." He eased himself back on the seat, swinging slowly. She looked up at him with fascination.

"Are you sure, Uncle Nick?" The man did a double take at the child, who looked at him still like calling this man she'd just met her Uncle.

"Did you call me Uncle, kid?"

"Yeah. All of Mama and Daddy's good friends are like that. Uncle Ellis. Aunt Zoey. Uncle Louis. Now you and Uncle Coach!" This kid was so sugary sweet it made Nick wanna vomit again, but at least it wasn't for his weird ailment.

"Tell me all about your aunts and uncles, kid."

_ Nick was in a pool hall in Philadelphia when they aired the documentary. A man strode across the screen on the small television in the corner, almost obscured vocally except for subtitles giving away his dialogue. Nick was nursing a scotch on the rocks, taking a break from pool sharking to see what was on the tube. Then the words popped up. Flu. Infected. Zombies? The pictures, too. Chargers. Witches. Jockeys. Hunters. All of 'em flashed before his eyes and he felt himself contract a bit inside. He swallowed and took a large sip of his drink, trying to douse the discomfort with some booze. He gritted his teeth at the amateur footage of attacks and tanks barreling down the streets of random states. "Urk.." he choked out. He felt sick. Suddenly, the screen changed and the subtitles flashed._

_ "You see, we had to fight them with the guns. It was all we could do." He knew the guy talking. But it wasn't how he remembered him. Ellis didn't wear suits. He didn't comb his hair and not wear his hat. And yet, there he was, on a serious backdrop with his name on a digital tag as he spoke. "There was four of us in my group. It was scary times." More footage._

_ Nick decided right then, that if his friend could cut through all his sudden awkwardness over the subject, it was only right to track him down._

* * *

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The conman was now sitting in a lavender-painted room, as Rory took out all her pony toys and showed them all to him one by one.

"And this is Sparkles, and this is Pink, and this is Lilies..." Nick was somewhat fascinated by how brazen with her information she was, and how little of a crap she gave for what other people thought of her actions. "Here, you can have Nikki because your names are the same kinda." She thrust an aquamarine pony toy into his hand. He'd been sitting through the tour of her room for about ten minutes now. He figured this was the part where they played or something. Great.

"Okay, my toy Sparkles is the Princess and Nikki is the servant girl who REALLY deserves to be the princess and Sparkles is being mean. Sparkles isn't really mean, she's just playing pretend. And Nikki is pretending to not like her and stuff. Okay, here we go." She scrunched up her face and put on a high pitched voice. "Oh, Nikki, you're so lame! You'll never be princess!" She looked to Nick's pony expectantly. "Okay, your turn." she prompted.

"Uh.." Nick didn't bother changing his voice. "Well, you know what Sparkles, the people in a really restrictive kingdom won't stay down for long and once they fight back, I'll be the princess."

"Your big words are stupid! You're stupid, Nikki! Nyeeeeh!" Rory stuck her tongue out.

"Wow, Sparkles is really harsh."

"Uncle Nick, she's not really mean! She's just pretendiiiing!" The door creaked open and Rory smiled. "Hi Daddy! We're playing ponies!" Nick's face fell ever so slightly and he whipped around to see Francis standing in the doorway, looking gobsmacked.

"Oh, man, of all the times to not have a camera."

_Ellis came in for his shift at the garage after the day of talking to the local paper about the documentary's success, happy to have shed what he now called his "fancy interview suit" yet again and go back to being a grease monkey. One of his coworkers greeted him. "Hey, Ellis. You got a few messages waitin' for you by the machine. I wrote down the names." He smiled and nodded at the protege, approaching the desk where the old phone was._

_ "CHERYL, BROKEN MUFFLER"_

_ "GERALD, NEW HUBCAPS"_

_ "NICK, WANTS YOU TO CALL BACK. IMPORTANT?" The last name struck him. No. It couldn't be him. It had to be Nick McClean from the next town over. Or Nick Gentile, who drove the fancy Italian sports car. There was no way._

_ But Ellis soon learned not much was impossible. _


	5. Rebirth and Birth

_Nick was not a tender man. He didn't really love. He just kinda liked. And sometimes, very rarely, he liked a lot. There he was, sitting in the Georgia airport, looking anxious over nothing. His suit was new, his suitcase wasn't very heavily packed. Just the things he needed. Maybe not even that. Things he felt he needed but would probably never touch during the trip. He rubbed his hands together as families reunited and departed, children toted suitcases in all sorts of colors, and visitors found their drivers. But where was his chaperone? Nowhere. Maybe he'd jumped ship on him._

_ "Nick?" His head jerked up. The mechanic stood in his normal greasy clothes, not the suit he'd seen him in on the television documentary. _

_ "E-Ellis.." he sputtered out, partially in shock for seeing him after all this time._

_ The two men hugged in the airport. _

_ Nick was not a tender man. But sometimes he cried a bit. No one knew but him and Ellis._

* * *

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"Do they haaaafta goooo? Uncle Nick and I were having so much fun!" Rory whined. It was nighttime now, and the three "uncles" were all set to head home. Ellis smiled down at the young girl as she pouted.

"Don't worry, darlin', Uncle Coach is gonna be here for two weeks, so we'll be comin' round plenty of times durin' then!" She instantly perked up and jumped up and down a bit. "Atta girl, stay nice and bouncy for when Uncle Nick comes by for the next pony game, right?" Nick frowned, but refused to look at the girl. Last thing he needed was a kid crying at his disapproval of her kiddie adventures.

"Uncle Nick, next time we can play king and queen, and we can have pretend horse races!" she cried excitedly, and everyone seemed to giggle but the gambler. He felt warmth tickling his cheeks ever-so-slightly in embarrassment, but he couldn't help but find the kid's innocence a bit endearing. Especially with all the stress he was juggling lately. "So you get back soon!" Francis grinned cockily at him.

"Yeah, Sparkles, come back soon."

"Daaaaddy, I was Sparkles, he was Nikki!"

"Oh, right, of course." He looked back to Nick. "You're not a bad babysitter, brother." He said with the slightest trace of warmth to his tone.

"Maybe I can go into the business."

_"I used to be a spitter." Coach almost spit out his water when he heard the girl before him say that. His doctor's secretary, of all people. _

_ "I-I'm sorry, miss?" She looked a bit scared upon admitting this, and rubbed the back of her neck nervously. "N-No, it's just...'used to'?" She looked away to the phone at her desk, then back to the man in front of her._

_ "I'd developed the flu around sixteen. About five years after it got cleaned out. My mom was a immune but I didn't get the gene, I suppose. I got...intimate with a carrier. A few days later I started feeling really...just shitty." She sighed. "I shrugged it off until it was too late. My stomach acid started morphing, and suddenly I started hallucinating. Everything looked scary and evil. I had the urge to attack any people who came in contact with me. But before it got too bad, they treated me. It was scary, though. At least I got it at a time where they could get rid of it. I still have some digestion problems, though."_

* * *

><em> Coach stared in disbelief. "That's mighty crazy, miss. I can't imagine." His eyes drifted over her. He noticed some small white scars scattered around her mouth. She smiled. They almost vanished.<br>_

Nick's breath was coming out in irregular hiccups, and he kneeled in front of Ellis' coffee table. They'd dropped Coach off at his hotel about an hour ago, and were now watching some random late night movies when some recent zombie flick came on. Nick was good for about forty five minutes before he started cracking. First his chest tightened. Then the head spinning. Dizzy. Breathing. Finally, he'd keeled over to his knees, clutching at his throat. Ellis jumped up from his armchair, and bolted to his friend's side.

"Nick! Nick...y'okay, man! Speak to me!" He shook his shoulder gently. The conman looked up at him, choking on his own air, and didn't quite know what to say, or even how to say it without passing out from lack of air. "Hey, c'mon...you..c'mon.." Ellis looked shaken, so the gambler figured he must have not looked too great himself.

"E-el..." he pulled himself back up onto the couch, trying to clear his thoughts. The all-too-realistic groans of zombies as put together by hollywood rung frm the television still, not helping his slowly descending mental state. Images of chargers grabbing him around the waist with one huge fist bombarded his mind. He choked out a pained grunt. Ellis looked confused and terrified, not sure how to help his friend's sudden ailment.

"Now, buddy, you just lay down here and try to keep calm, I'll go and call up an ambulance for ya. It's all gonna be okay, Nick. It's gonna be just fine.." His words bumped into each other as he spoke, his nerves starting to get the better of him. It'd been so long since Ellis had encountered some sudden incapacitation, let alone a friend suddenly falling over choking on air during a casual late night movie.

"H-Hi.." Nick heard Ellis say nervously into the phone from the other room. "My buddy here, Nick, he just fell over and now he can't breathe! He can barely talk, please get over here soon, this is freakin' weird..What if he's havin' a heart attack or somethin'! He ain't fat or nothin', but what if he's getting' old and it' catchin' up to him!" Nick would have sighed if he could get some air into his freaking body. "Okay, thank you!" He heard the mechanic come back into the room, and kneeled down to be face to face with him. "Don't worry, man, they're gonna be here soon. S'all gonna be okay." He patted Nick's shoulder, hoping to put him at ease.

"Stay strong, buddy, we both know we've been through worse.."

Nick was fully aware of this. Perhaps now more than ever.

_Ellis had cried when he'd first seen Rory as a baby, as if she were his own in a way. She wrapped her tiny baby hands around his calloused knuckles and yawned. Her soft, brown skin met his sun-tanned previously dirty (cleaned for the baby's sake, of course) complexion nicely and the soft sound of her breathing made his heart want to burst in amazement. It was so brilliant how two people could produce such a small, beautiful little thing who did things like take comfort in the roughness of Ellis' hands. _

_ "Aw, man, Rochelle, she's gorgeous. Looks just like her Mama. Got Francis' nose, though." He chuckled to himself. Rochelle sat in the hospital bed, looking weary but content. She was gonna go home the next day with Rory and Francis. Her husband entered with a tray of hospital food and placed it on the table set in front of her. His eyes were trained onto Ellis and his daughter. The mechanic sensed it. As gruff as he was, he could sense Francis' love and amazement at this child that transcended even his own. It was odd to see that hidden kindness and warmth in Francis' eyes. But maybe there was more to him than the tattooed outside. The baby yawned again, her tiny mouth stretching daintily and almost soundlessly. Francis held out his arms._

_ "C-can I see her, please?" Ellis handed her over slowly, like she was made of porcelain. The vest-wearing man stared at her with a foreign expression. He looked like he was going through something great, though._

_ People were fascinating. _


	6. Visitor

_Ellis was amazingly happy when he first saw Keith again after the infection. They'd shared a manly hug and gone fishing together, spending the whole day on the tranquility of the lake. They traded stories and laughed and even teared up a bit. _

_ "Man, I told them so much about you, Keith. The time you deep fried a turkey. When you tried to build a shack. When you fell in the tunnel of love." He sighed. "Man, those were some good times we had, huh?" Keith chuckled._

_ "Dang, Ellis, we're still young. We got lots more memories left to make. Shit's got to get back to normal somehow, anyway!" He seemed optimistic, in spite of the scars and marks leftover from the chaos. _

_ "Ya think...?" Ellis muttered._

_ "Yeah, man! Only one who can change yerself is you! Hold on, I think I got a big one..."_

* * *

><p><p>

"He's suffered a massive anxiety attack. We had to sedate him to get his breathing normal, and he's sleeping now. Does he have any prescriptions or illnesses we should know about?" Ellis rubbed the back of his neck as the doctor spoke medical jargon to him.

"Uh, not that I know of...Y'might wanna ask him once he gets up. He's only been staying with me for a few days. Sorry.." The doctor scribbled down a few notes onto a clipboard.

"Alright. Are you his designated bedside visitor?"

"Pardon?" The doctor looked a mix of bored and exasperated.

"You sign a form, and they let you come in at any time to sit with him. Only one person can visit outside of visiting hours, and I'm guessing that might be you?" Ellis thought. Who else would come see Nick in the hospital so often other than the person he was staying with? Rochelle and Francis had the kid to look after. Coach was supposed to relax on this vacation. Besides, he was worried enough that he wanted to be able to come see Nick whenever.

"Yeah, sure, that'd be me." He adjusted his hat nervously. "Can I go in and see him now?"

"Alright." the doctor said. "Make sure to sign the visiting form on the way out at the front desk. Be very, very easy with him. Don't discuss anything stressful, try not to trigger another attack. Watch your words. There should be a call button with him in case he needs a nurse." He walked away.

"O-okay.." He poked his head into the room. "Nick?" He whispered, looking at his sleeping form in the bed. His brows were still knitted slightly in worry, and Ellis sighed and went to his side. "Man, they said you had an anxiety attack. I think that means you got a little too excited and flipped out or somethin'. But why?" Nick's face twitched slightly, and an eye opened groggily.

"Whuh...?" Ellis jumped a tiny bit at his sudden waking, and leaned a bit closer. "Ellis, where'm I? S'isn't your house..." His voice was slightly messy from the remnants of the sedation.

"You had an episode, so they took ya to the hospital. Got real worried 'bout you, might I add. You were chokin' on my damn floor! If choking could stain my carpet woulda been a mess."

"That's..a terrible analogy..." he mumbled, shifting his head against the over-fluffed hospital pillow. "An episode? What the shit's that mean?"

"Doctor called it an anxiety attack. He's gonna come back around sometime to ask you about any medicines you're on an' stuff. You know all that junk, right?" Nick's mind hooked up some wires as he came back from the sedative and he felt himself stepping in some proverbial dog shit here.

"Yeah.." he mumbled gruffly. How could he get pass Ellis finding out? Maybe they'd kick him out of the room. If not, well shit. He'd be the biggest coward ever to the hick now. "M'kinda thirsty, you got any water?" Ellis jumped up.

"Yeah, they gave us some stuff here..." He handed him a styrofoam cup and switched the bedside table to be in front of him. "Take it easy, buddy. Sign over there says you're gonna get discharged tomorrow mornin' if everything goes alright. I'm gonna be here every step of the way."

"You gotta go home sometime." Nick said, sipping.

"Naw, man, I'm your designated buddy. I'm gonna stay here all night with ya." Nick raised an eyebrow at this information.

"How're you gonna sleep, then?"

"In a chair, I reckon. Unless you wanna scoot over and you're comfortable enough with your sexuality to share a bed with a bro."

"Don't get cute with me." Ellis grinned.

"Whoever said I was trying to be cute?"

* * *

><p><p>

_"Please...make it stop.." Nick moaned into the intercom hookup between him and the scientists. "I can't take it anymore." He was on his knees in the room, as the men and women observing him watched from the other end of a two-way window. "C'mon...I can't..." He breathed heavily, looking at the cold white floor under him._

_ "I'm sorry, sir, you're only halfway done with the test. Next simulation, hunter." The sensory assault began. This sounded like a burning building. The smell of acrid smoke, though nowhere to be seen, filled his nose. He heard what sounded like drool-filled growls from all sides. Where was it? Where was it? He prepared himself for it, and looked around. He picked up the two fake weapons they'd given him: a bat and an unloaded pistol. The bat shivered in his shaky hands and he felt the oddest temptation to just fall to the floor. The sounds creeped up on him, he felt what was like breathing on his neck, then it snapped away. The growls lowered themselves as he almost felt the hunter crouching somewhere in the shadows. Anywhere. In this room. Nick knew there was no real zombie, but the sounds and smells were so familiar his mind was making them real._

_ "STOP!" he screamed, knuckles growing white around the bat. "STOP IT!"_

* * *

><p><p>

"Look who came to visit!" Ellis chirped, leading in Rory. She rushed to Nick's bedside.

"Uncle Nick!" she cried. Her eyes looked a tiny bit glassy, and her hair was a bit messier than it had been the day before. "I was so scared! Mama said you got sick and were in the hospital and I got really worried!" She bounced on her feet nervously, reaching out to touch the older man's hand. "I'm so happy you're okay, Uncle Nick. I wanted to play with you but then you got all sick! Aw, man..." she sighed, and sat in the chair next to his bed, still looking a bit shaken. "H-Here..." she took something out of her pocket. It was a small pony. "This is Nikki. You can have her. I think she belongs to you. And I want her to watch you while you're in here and make you think happy thoughts!" Nick tok the small horse.

"Gee, ah..thanks, kid. It's awesome." She let a small smile peek out.

"You're welcome!" She jumped up and hugged him round the neck. "Please get better soon so you can come have dinner at my house and we can play king and queen like I said!" Rochelle and Francis followed in with a teddy bear holding a heart that said "I can BEAR-ly wait til you get better!" on it. Nick's mouth formed a tight line at the sight of the toy.

"What in the world is that thing?"

"I thought it was cute." Rochelle huffed.

"I thought it'd motivate you to get out faster; Sooner you get out, sooner you get to stop seeing it and its cheesiness." Rochelle groaned and placed the bear on the table beside his bed. It stared at him menacingly with an unsettling cuteness. Or maybe he just didn't like it. He put Nikki beside it for some sort of weird pairing of cute shit.

"So, any of you bring any food that's not rubbery processed shit like they serve here?"

_Ellis got released from the testing facility, and the first thing he did was smell the air and roll around in the nearest green grass he could find. "Aw, I missed ya, good ol' plants! Good ol' people with normal skin and no acid or weird tongue's or puke! Good ol' normal food and not havin' to take a gun everywhere! Shit is so nice, man." He enjoyed everything with a new perspective that day, and from every day onward. He called Rochelle as soon as he got home to tell her the news, and then Coach right after to find out about his plans to take a break to California. _

_ "Hey, where's Nick? I wanna go out and have a party tonight but Keith is still comin' back from Louisiana. I figure he'll go out drinkin' with me." There was a brief pause on the other end._

_ "Nick's got a lot going on right now." Coach said quietly. Ellis was confused._

_ "Whatcha mean, man?"_

_ "He's in extended testing. He's a lab rat." _


	7. Knowledge

_Nick was in a bed in an intensive care unit of the CEDA hospital wing. He was running a high fever, pale except for the flush from the heat battling in his head. He breathed with the slightest hint of labor. White knuckled hands clutched the sheets, his body writhing uncomfortably on the bed. A nurse walked in, much less concerned than Nick figured she ought to be. She looked to him with a lack of empathy, as if only to see if he wasn't foaming at the mouth. "Do you need anything, sir?"_

_ "What's wrong with me!"_

_ "You have a simple infection. Fatigue partly to do with it. So PLEASE try to relax and get some rest, you're not much use to us if you're rolling around in a fever." Nick couldn't believe the utter assholes who worked here, especially since he himself was a pretty big asshole. "Drink some water. Get some sleep. Urinate when you have to. And make it quick, we have other people who need the wing." He groaned and laid back in the uncomfortable bed, the sheets like sandpaper on him. _

_ "Hurry. We have lots of tests to run."_

_ Lots of tests._

* * *

><p><p>

The clock ticked slowly. Nick's eyes felt heavy, but he couldn't sleep. The bits and pieces of fear floated in his mind like air in a balloon; they could deflate slowly, but tiny amounts still remained. Ellis' snoring wasn't helping much either. He sat in the uncomfortable-looking chair, arms folded. Every now and then he'd mumble in his sleep about Keith or cars or something. Hick stuff. Ellis stuff. Nick found it almost calming compared to his own thought process at the moment. He picked up the pony off his bedside table and inspected it. It had a tiny heart on it's body, painted on cheaply. A small flame of warmth lit temporarily inside him at the thought of the innocent child's well wishes.

Placing the toy back next to the disgustingly cheesy bear, he looked at Ellis. His nose was scarred still, after all these years. His skin was tanned from working and running around in the sun. Traces of dirt and oil were on his clothes, little battle scars from going up against all those cars he had to fix. Nick sometimes envied people he considered normal. The mechanic in front of him probably didn't have crazy anxiety attacks in public or nightmares about chargers. He was so carefree and happy.

Ellis yawned and leaned up, cracking his back. "Shit..." he mumbled to himself, eyes still shut. "Crappy chair...can't get any good sleep..." Nick raised an eyebrow as the hick's eyes opened. "You're still up? Jeez. Aren't you tired?" The conman turned his gaze to the ceiling.

"Somewhat. Can't seem to get to sleep, though..You seem pretty ready for it, though. You get in the bed. I'll sit in the chair. There's really no reason for me to still be here anyway. If you're this exhausted at ten at night, I can only imagine how you'd feel overnight." Ellis smiled gently.

"Can't go doin' that to ya, man."

_"Can we please see him?" Rochelle asked, softly at first. _

_ "No." the CEDA agent said, a master of monotone. "We don't know what interaction with other people will cause. It'd be too dangerous for you. Sorry. Go home, folks." Rochelle quickly lost her patience with the man. _

_ "I'm a carrier! Ellis is a carrier! Francis, Zoey, Louis, we're all carriers! If Coach was here, HE'D be a carrier too! We can see him, can't we?" the agent didn't look up from his paperwork. Ellis felt his blood pressure rising at his apathy for them or Nick._

_ "No. Leave."_

_ "We ain't leavin' till we see Nick!" Ellis shouted._

_ "What are you doing to him!" Zoey hissed. _

_ "I'll call security if you don't learn to shut your mouths and follow orders from a government __agent. So I suggest you stop trying to be little carrier heroes and get moving before you face getting arrested." Francis stepped forward._

_ "Look, brother. You like money?" He took a twenty out of his pocket. "Here. Stop feeding us this bullshit and let us go through. He's been alone for months. Let us in." The agent looked like he couldn't care less._

_ "I don't know what criminals you associate with sir, but we do not accept bribes here." he said that last part particularly loudly. "Now please exit the premises before I call security to the area and have you detained and subject to government questioning." Francis grimaced and looked like he was about to punch the man at the desk, but Rochelle put a hand on his shoulder and he turned to her. _

_ "Let's go." Ellis and Zoey's faces fell in disappointment. Louis sighed._

_ "I'll go get the car." the businessman said, exiting before any trouble broke loose, namely Francis-induced trouble. "I'm really sorry, guys. I thought it'd work. I really did." _

_ "We know, Louis.." Zoey said quietly. "Ellis.." she put a hand on his shoulder. "I'm sorry." He shook his head._

* * *

><em> "Man...this is bullshit..." <em>

"You...you what?" Ellis sputtered out. "Ya got a disease? And you didn't tell me?" The doctor raised an eyebrow at Ellis' reaction.

"It's not a disease. It's a condition."

"Still serious!" Nick sighed, not looking the mechanic in the eye as his web unraveled. "C'mon, stop bein' such a hardass for a second and look out for yourself! How long have you know you had this, huh? Go on, tell me!"

"Three years.." the conman mumbled.

"Three! What the hell, man! That's way too long! And you never took the medication they gave you? Not once?"

"Just psychologist bullshit."

"Look, I'm not the brightest man in Georgia, but I know that when a doctor tells you to take something for something that serious, you take it! Shit! Common sense!" He huffed out heavily, searching Nick for a sign of guilt. Nothing.

"Well, if you're done.." the doctor broke in. "I'll prescribe him some medication for it, and we'll send you home after it goes through." He wrote something down on a pad and left the room.

"Nick.." Ellis sat in his seat, defeated at the silence.

Just defeated.

_"Someone wanted to see you today, sir." a sheepish-looking new employee said. "They got turned away, though.." Nick grunted, not sure what to say. Maybe he was dreaming._

_ "Who were they?"_

_ "Pretty motley crew. Let me try to remember.." He was the only empathetic guy in the whole place, it seemed. Maybe he just liked Nick. He could only imagine why. "Ah, right...let's see..there was a business man. A biker..Some lady I saw on the news once, actually, I think. A girl, maybe. And I remember one was a greasy-looking kinda guy with a hat. He was yelling a lot. Probably crazy people who wandered in."_

_ "Probably people from my nasty past." He said deadpan._

_ "Could be." He took Nick's old regulation clothing for cleaning. "Anyway, thought you might wanna know."_

_ Knowing?_

_ Nick had no clue what that was anymore. _


	8. Memories

_Rochelle had work that day, and Francis didn't. He had to take care of his four-year-old daughter that day, as she went about in her innocence. This included possibly toppling into burning stoves or walking into a barn full of spears or something, so the vest-wearing man had to keep an eye out at all times. But he figured that she deserved more than to be stuffed up in the house all day watching television and eating cut up hot dogs. So he decided to take her on a little field trip._

_ "Where are we going, Daddy?"_

_ "Somewhere new." He'd taken her to zoos, aquariums, museums, carnivals, all that stuff. But this place could cause trouble. "But you gotta promise you'll behave well."_

_ "Okay!" she said happily, nestling into her car seat. Francis partially couldn't believe his position. Years ago he was shooting zombies from a rooftop after almost going to jail for stealing. Now he was toting a little girl who happened to be his around. Time really does change people, he supposed. _

_ When they finally arrived, Rory stuck close to her father. This area was new. The day was sunny, but the silent air of the wide open space made her a bit apprehensive. He put a hand on her back and led her gently up the dirt path. Flags waved gently in the breeze. They stopped after a few moments of walking. "Here, honey." he said softly, pointing._

_ "What's this?" she asked, still sounding a bit nervous._

_ "This is your Uncle Bill." The small girl approached the headstone, spreading her tiny hand over the name on the cold surface. Fresh flowers lay there. Zoey or Louis, probably. _

_ "I don't see anyone."_

_ "He's somewhere else." He responded after a pause. "Not on earth. He's somewhere else. But he can see you and I'm sure he loves you very much." He wasn't sure what to tell the kid, because really sometimes he wondered if what he was saying was true to him. But still. She couldn't comprehend a more complex explanation at that age. She looked pensive. Then she wrapped her hands around the stone and pressed her cheek against it._

_ "Hi, Uncle Bill. Nice to meet you." _

* * *

><p><p>

"I can 'bear-ly' wait to throw this piece of shit in the garbage." Nick grumbled, clutching the bear absentmindedly in his hand as him and Ellis left the hospital. The conman looked somewhat strange in Ellis' borrowed t-shirt and jeans. Almost normal. The pony was placed in his pocket carefully, not wanting to damage it. It was odd how much he sympathized with this kid. She was nice, he'd give her that much. He usually wasn't a kid person, but she was growing on him.

"It was a nice gift." Ellis simply replied.

"Nice. But ugly."

"Rochelle won't like hearin' that."

"She knows how much I don't like it." And he slung it into a nearby trash bin. "I'll make it up to her somehow. Buy her dinner. Or a babysitter. Or a better husband." Ellis snorted involuntarily. "I'm just joking, of course. Even if he does dress like a member of an eighties hair band." The mechanic looked to him.

"Did you take your medicine before we left?" Nick sighed.

"Yes.." the word came out like a child would after being asked if he did something bad.

"I'm still upset with you that you didn't tell anyone, or take your meds this whole time. Come on, you have to do this for yourself. You can't go through life bein' afraid of anything that has to do with z—-...them."

"Look, I just don't want people thinking I'm a coward. Medications fix you when you're sick. They don't fix cowardice. I just need to learn to cope, maybe expose myself a little more and learn to deal..." Ellis stopped and looked at him.

"I've met plenty'a cowards before, Nick. A man who can admit when he needs some help ain't ever one of them."

_"What's the matter with him now?"  
>"He's fainted."<em>

_ "Fainted? Why?"_

_ "He started panicking. His breathing became erratic, his heart rate increased, he went ballistic after today's simulation with the tank. Looks like anxiety."_

_ "Anxiety? This man's killed zombies. Tons of them. What's he got to be anxious over, he should feel like some kind of king. Or Rambo."_

_ "It seems the ordeal took a worse toll on him than we initially thought. His tenacity might not have been as genuine as it first appeared. He's crumbled more and more with every test."_

_ "We can't just find a new subject, we've released all the other carriers. They all completed their tests pretty normally based on their initial reports. We're so close to this vaccine, Jackson."_

_ "I know...we're going to have to keep it going."_

_ "Will his body be able to take it?" Nick's vision became fuzzy as he opened his tired eyes barely, seeing two shadows looming over him._

_ "Time will tell."_

* * *

><p><p>

Zoey was perched at the couch, watching whatever was on Ellis' television, when they came in. She stood up immediately and marched over to the mechanic. "Ellis, I was worried sick. I can't even drive through to Florida to visit some relatives without getting a call halfway through South Carolina telling me you need me to watch the house because you had to stay in the hospital overnight and _you _left the door open! No explanation, no nothing. Then Francis tells me you're in here because Nick had a panic attack. Now that's no small cookie if he had to go to the hospital, but could you PLEASE give me specifics next time so I don't assume the worst."

The two men stood in mild shock at her rant, which was simultaneously fast and passive aggressive. She looked to the third wheel in this tirade.

"Glad to see you're looking better, Nick." She inhaled sharply and took on a more calm expression. "Now, tell me, why did I of all people have to do this? You have friends. You have loads of them don't you? Even Coach is in town this week." Ellis took off his hat and clutched it sheepishly in his hands.

"Well, y'see...Coach is on vacation and I didn't wanna be a bother. 'Sides he didn't get a rental car with him. He couldn't just walk from the hotel to my house. And Rochelle and Francis had to take care of their kid. Keith is in another hospital because he tried to make a volcano in his yard and got into an accident." He gave a weak, apologetic smile. She stared at them for a long time, then sighed in defeat.

"You use my weakness to your cute little explanation routines well, Ellis. Anyway. I gotta go. You," She looked to Nick. "Take it easy. And don't be mean to Ellis, I'm sure he treats you way better than a jerk like you deserves. And you," She turned to Ellis. "don't take any of his crap. Make sure he takes his medicine, and please don't call me while I'm driving in the middle of the night to make me watch your shit. Okay?" The duo nodded. She kissed Ellis on the cheek in a friendly manner and left the house.

"Take care of yourselves, dammit!" She hollered from her car. "You're grown men!" With that sentiment, she backed out of the driveway and headed back on track to Florida.

"She's quite a woman." Nick responded.

"She's actually more forceful when you're romantic with her." 

_Louis and Zoey were at Bill's grave, looking somewhat worse for the wear, but cheerful nonetheless. They each had a small envelope in their hands. Zoey laid another flower on the dirt mound, and gave a small smile to it, like an old friend. It kinda was. _

_ "I thought you might wanna hear about this, Bill. Francis is getting married." she announced. The wind carried the message as the words came out of her mouth softly._

_ "I know what you're thinking," Louis chimed in. "Him? Married? Who'd be such an idiot. But Don't worry. He somehow landed a good one. He's even looking for a legitimate job. Crazy, huh?" The two sat in silence. But it could be argued they heard more than that. Maybe they heard a voice from long ago. _


	9. Business

_ Francis was on cooking duty that day. Zoey and Francis lounged around in the lobby of their home. The hotel was due to be open any day, but then the infection hit. It was now the home to three survivors in the keys. They'd taken out every zombie they found and had enough weapons to keep any left over. They took food from wherever they could find, and due to the diminished zombie population on the island, there was a lot. Most people escaped when they first heard of the infection. Others drowned trying to swim once infected. They put all the bodies out to sea and claimed the island as their own. _

_ It got lonely._

_ But it was better than fighting zombies back in Philly._

_ "I kinda wish there would be something on television." Zoey complained, clicking the remote. Every channel on the lobby's television was static, with the occasional foreign news network in a less-disease ridden country covering the events with CEDA. They all looked nervous as they reported. "But I guess that's the least of our problems. When will we come back?"_

_ "Just be patient, Zoey." Louis responded, a bit cheerier. "Things will look up. We already have it pretty good compared to.." He looked to amateur video footage on the news channel of a witch sobbing in an alleyway. It had to be America. Had to be. "...others.."_

* * *

><p><p>

"I'm so hun-GRY!" Nick shouted from the living room.

"Hold yer horses, the Chinese food'll be here soon!" Ellis scolded. "So impatient. Runnin' home from the hospital all a mess and then you have the nerve to complain to me when you don't eat soon enough. Play a damn video game if you're so bored'n starved." Nick grumbled.

"I can't eat a video game."

"I'll hold you down and make you eat one if you don't stop your whinin'." Nick had been home for two days, and things had been a bit tense. They usually had slightly angry banter like this on a regular basis, but it seemed to come a bit faster lately. Ellis was upset that the conman had harbored such a big secret and neglected his personal health for so long. Nick was mad that his deep dark secret had been dragged out into the opening all because of a damn zombie movie, and that Ellis was treating him like an ill-behaved son for his actions.

The mechanic spent a lot of time working during the weekdays. Nick mostly looked after the house and attempted to get used to the scenery as he treated Ellis' home as a temporary place, only for a long time. He'd drifted for so long this was now the closest thing he had to a home. He obviously couldn't stay forever, but he needed a change of scenery. The doctor had recommended he got some "relaxation time," and Nick wasn't exactly perfectly relaxed when being dealt a bad hand in Poker or worrying about whoever he was hustling in pool catching onto his tricks. He figured that maybe spending some time in the sprawling silent landscape of Savannah would do his body some good. As long as he stayed away from the late-night zombie movie marathons.

_Louis was in his office when he got the call. "Hello, Franklin Brothers. You've reached Louis in the corporate office. Hope you're having a good day, how may I help you?" The gritty, but friendly voice came crackling through the other line and the businessman was in shock for a brief moment. "Hi, Francis. How're you doing?" He had a cushy office now. He'd been promoted highly once the company got their act together again. Not many previous employees had made it, at least not in his rank. The higher-ups had the money to keep away from the infected largely. But not perfectly. He'd been __promoted on the basis of "tenacity and dedication to the Franklin Brothers initiative for facing an ever-changing world with confidence." That was code for "Congratulations, you're still here, Louis." He wasn't sure what to do with all of it._

_ He had a fancy chair, a brand new computer. A good view of Philly beneath him, every car chugging forward in the streets like small multicolored bugs. And there was Louis, good old personable Louis, holding the magnifying glass over it all. He was by no means the boss of the whole operation, but he was a lot higher up than before. Louis wasn't sure whether or not he was afraid of heights. _

_ "Hey, man, it's been a while." Francis responded._

_ "Last time we saw each other was..." Bill's funeral._

_ "Yeah, ages ago!" The man on the other end chuckled in an attempt to diffuse the tension of the memories. "So, ah, h-how've you been?" Was he trying to make small talk? Louis was at work..._

_ "Alright..Francis, do you have a reason for calling me while I'm on the clock? It's great talking to you, really, but I could always call you when I get home where I'm not likely to get fired for it.."_

_ "Oh! Uh, yeah, so...how do you ask a girl to marry you?" A pregnant pause ensued._

_ "What?"_

_ "Aren't you married?" Louis felt his face bend a bit in confusion._

_ "No. I'm seeing someone, but we're not married. Why're you asking me?"_

_ "Um...I'll explain later. Call me when you get off." He jotted down Francis' number on a sticky note and pasted it onto his suitcase so he wouldn't forget it on the commute back home. "Thanks, Louis." _

_ He hung up the phone and got up from his office desk, striding over to the window slowly. The sky was so blue that day. It was almost weird to see it looking so...natural. A hand went and pressed itself against the cool glass. The sounds of the city didn't bear down on him or wash over him. They sat on the other end of the small glass barrier between them._

_ "Lonely at the top," some had said. He felt detached._

* * *

><p><p>

"You can't tell Ellis I came through." Zoey said, putting down Rory onto her feet.

"Why noooot?" the girl whined, pouting. It was dark out, way past Rory's bedtime. But it was a special occasion, her aunt was visiting suddenly. She crouched down to be eye to eye with the young child she was so fond of.

"Because, silly," she poked her tiny nose gently, "I told Uncle Ellis I was in a rush. And I kinda am. But I couldn't resist popping in and saying hi as long as I was in the neighborhood. Besides, I like to mess with Uncle Ellis sometimes 'cause he's silly." Rory giggled at this sentiment, her aunts and uncles fooling around like kids, playing games and keeping secrets. She stood up and looked to Rochelle, who'd followed her to the door. They both had gentle smiles on.

"Think Nick'll be okay? You know him better than I do.." Rochelle grinned.

"Don't even start. His sarcasm will keep him going, if anything. He didn't take crap from zombies, he won't take crap from himself." Francis walked in, picked up Rory, and nodded to Zoey.

"We'll look after 'em. You get going, don't want you being any more off schedule than you already are."

"Thanks. Great seeing you guys." She kissed Rory's forehead and left.

"Will Uncle Nick really be okay?" Rochelle stroked her daughter's hair.

"We'll see."


	10. Explanation

_ Not long after the infection ended, people started pouring into precints all over the country. The cops weren't sure what to do. People of all ages were coming in, and they all looked the same. They had the same gutted demeanor, the same empty-but still scared-eyes. Nothing could hide that they had seen things no one should have to see. Some of them had tears in their eyes. Some of them were already crying. Some of them were slightly stony-faced. Everyone reacted differently. There were many who just became numb. Some cracked and leaked, every tear within them pouring out like rivers of shame and fear. But on the whole, they all looked the same to the officers. _

_ They often placed something on the table in front of whoever was at the desk that moment. Guns. Rifles. Diffused bombs. Swords and bloody frying pans and bats and crowbars, any thing you could imagine that could be used to fight off zombies. They almost always looked the police in the eyes, except when they were just too filled with shame._

_ "Take me in," they'd say. "I'm a murderer."_

* * *

><p><p>

"Take them now," Ellis said. "You're shaking."

Nick had been skipping doses when Ellis took a vacation with Keith for the weekend to go fishing again. The mechanic could tell from his symptoms of withdrawal that had already set in. Nick looked anxious and upset for no reason. He shook slightly when he stood still. His breathing quickened a bit.

"I don't get it." Nick said, putting two pills in an angry fist. "I never took medicine until recently, and I was fine then. Sure these things are even helping me?" Ellis frowned.

"Well, fer one, you were "fine," but you had episodes every time somethin' came up relatin' to a zombie or the infection. So yeah, you did need 'em. And, now that you're on the medication and it's helpin' you feel better, yer body expects it to keep comin' in the right doses. So when you cut it off, you're gonna have problems. And yes, I'd say they are helpin', because you aren't fallin' over and hyperventilating every few days like you were before." He capped off his rant with an assertive nod to the conman to take the pills. Nick grunted and swallowed with a quick swig of water. His expression betrayed his reluctance to do it.

"When did you become a doctor, Ay-lus?"

"Now hush yer mouth, Nick, I'm lookin' out for ya! Gosh, did yer momma ever look twice at you or are you just used to takin' care of yourself?" The older man grimaced.

"I wasn't a psychotic wreck when I was a kid, for one."

"Yer still not one."

_"Daddy, stop it!"_

_ "Piece of...shit!...Think you're...so...funny! I'll teach you...a lesson!"  
>"Daddy!" Rory squealed in fear as her father beat up on the younger male who was at the grave when they showed up. "Please stop!" Her high pitched wails filled the air, overlapping with Francis' rough angry tirade as he punched the other man.<em>

_ "Don't you know how to respect a veteran, you punk!" His mouth spewed angry profanities as his fists continued to collide with the vandal. Bill's hat sat sullied and dirty a few feet away. Flowers were strewn about. The man's pants were slightly unzipped. He'd stumbled into the graveyard in the early morning, and decided it was a good place ot use the bathroom. He'd evidently picked the wrong grave to relieve himself on, and when Francis and Rory had showed up for their usual visit, they'd seen him stumbling as his hand knocked the beret into the mud. The biker flew into a rage._

_ "Get off me, you psycho!" the man cried, trying to beat away Francis' attacks._

_ "You're calling ME a psycho, you disrespectful little nutsack!"_

_ "Daddy, please!" tears poured down her small round face, her round brown eyes wide with horror. "Stop it!" her voice came out in a loud, rough screech, filled with all her trauma. Francis froze, and looked at his six year old. His face suddenly became etched with fear and realization of what he'd been exposing his child to. He dropped the boy (he had to be in his late teens at earliest) and ran over to Rory. He held her tight, pressing her face gently against his shoulder._

_ "I'm sorry..." a small, silent crop of tears fell unnoticed from his aged eyes. "I'm so sorry, Rory."_

* * *

><p><p>

"What was it like?" the young girl said softly. Nick raised an eyebrow, not looking up from combing the pony toy's hair.

"What was what like?" A small pause passed through.

"The zombies." her voice released the two words like a small secret between the two of them, a whisper from a mind filled with questions. Nick's head snapped up, his hand freezing mid-brush. "S-sorry..."

"No...No, it's okay." a sigh escaped his lips. He smoothed his dark hair on his head, and looked at the innocent little girl. She didn't mean any harm, he could tell. She was just curious, as children often were. And Rory was one of the few children that the conman had any actual love for. The two had a small friendship blossoming between them over the past few weeks after they'd met. Nick had known many adults who he could discuss serious things with, but he felt a weird comfort when he spoke about innocent things like ponies and princesses to his "niece."

"It was...scary. I guess you can already assume that." Her eyes were huge. He had her full attention. "They were loud. And ugly. And nasty." He analyzed everything that he could say to her about the situation in his head, making sure everything that came out of his mouth was screened to not freak her out. But how could he handle this in a way that wouldn't scare her? How could you cleanly tell a young child that everything they knew was gone and that their friends were monsters?

You couldn't.

"Rory." he said firmly, but gently. "It's nothing you need to worry about. I'll tell you when you're older." She picked up a grey pony with a blonde mane and began to brush its tail.

"Oh, that's what everyone says..." her cheeks puffed out in slight frustration.

It was for the best.

_ "So, you'll do your community service in exchange for prison time, and probation." Rochelle stated. She looked frustrated. She was clearly not happy about what her husband had done. She'd been much more angry when she'd first found out. There was quite a shouting match in their home that night while their child slept._

_ "I'm sorry, Ro. I just..." he sighed, and placed a hand over his face in slight shame._

_ "I know you were angry, but you didn't have to do that. In front of the baby, no less." She shook her head, still very upset about the whole ordeal. "What if she's scarred for life over this? And it'll be your fault." She got into bed, and pulled the covers up to her waist. She sat up, still looking stern with him. _

_ He shook his own head. "I just..wasn't thinking."_

_ "You sure weren't." There was a silence, neither of them really sure how to carry on with the discussion. To start another argument, to let it go, or to continue in a slightly more subdued matter." He climbed into bed next to her, and put an arm around her shoulders. "Francis...I know it was a terrible thing he did. I kinda get why you did it...But..."_

_ "I know...Rory." He pressed his lips to her temple gently, then placed his forehead against hers. "I need to make it up to her somehow. I'll figure something out." She looked to him, and her expression softened. She kissed him softly, and they held each other for a while._

_ "I love you, Ro."_

_ "I love you too."_

_ "I love our family."_

_ "I know."_

* * *

><p><p>

"I don't like scary, Uncle Nick."

"Me neither."


	11. Stories

_ "Boss, what are you doing here?" Louis had kept unwrapping his sandwich when that call rang out in the fast food joint. There was a small silence, and then another (slightly louder) "Boss?" rang out in the not-too-crowded place. Louis looked up this time, not used to being addressed such a way. His eyes reflected his minor shock, as his hands stopped undoing the wax papers. "Are you okay? Did they..." he looked around nervously, as if expecting a team to come down from the ceiling and seize him for talking so simply to his superior. "...fire you?" Louis blinked, then chuckled._

_ "Sit."_

_ "Eh!"_

_ "Sit, Stevens." The employee grabbed his food from his own table and sat across from the older man. He looked stiff. He pushed his wire-rim glasses up the bridge of his nose and laughed somewhat awkwardly. "Don't look so nervous. You're new to office work, aren't you?" He took a bite of his sub, a small amused smile still on his lips._

_ "You could tell?"_

_ "Well, I wasn't nearly as nervous around my superiors at your level once I'd gotten into the game. Maybe I'm just above the curve." He laughed a bit, trying to ease the man's nerves. "I kinda miss those days, y'know?" Stevens shifted nervously, biting his food slowly and swallowing quickly._

_ "So, ah...If you don't mind my asking, sir..."_

_ "Call me Louis." The other man's cheeks tinged pink a bit._

_ "Louis. Right. Ah..why are you here?" His fingers tightened slightly around his soda. "I mean, ah, don't the higher-ups usually order fancier food than.." he looked down at their sandwiches. "this?"Louis simply kept chewing, mulling over the idea of being a "higher-up" who ought to be ordering "fancier food." _

_ "Let me tell you, my man." He said cheerily. "You think your crappy subs and soggy french fries suck now. But once you're cooped up in a stuffy office all day, cut off from the grease and grime of society, you start to really miss being closer to the ground."_

_ "I...see..."_

* * *

><p><p>

"This is me at my kindergarten graduation." Rory thrust the photo in Nick's face. He looked at it carefully. Francis was wearing what was relatively normal clothes compared to his usual biker chic attire. Rochelle was in a not-too-casual-or-formal outfit. Rory stood proudly in the foreground with a felt graduation cap and a missing front tooth displayed prominently. "Th'reason I got a missing tooth is because I was playin' baseball a few weeks before and a ball hit me in the mouth. It hurt, but the tooth fairy came. So it's okay." He grunted in understanding, studying the pictures. She shuffled through her box of pictures, all stuffed in a lilac shoebox that was in her closet.

"Here's me and my kitty. She ran away from home." A sour-faced calico cat was in her arms, looking less than pleased with being cradled by the girl. "And that's all of them. So now you're all caught up. Mama says you were gone for a long time. 'Fore I was born! I mean, aren't you and Mama and Daddy friends? Why'd ya run off for so long anyway?" she stretched out the last word, like a detective giving an interrogation that was only beginning. He raised an eyebrow.

"Was all this information to blackmail me with some sort of exchange between us?"

"Whatcha mean?" she cocked her head.

"Like a, 'here's my entire life in pictures, now give me the details on where you've been all my life' kinda deal." Rory hoisted up her shoebox and gave her "uncle" a funny look.

"You talk funny sometimes, Uncle Nick." She pouted and brought the box back into the closet. She clapped her hands together to get off any dust, and sat in front of Nick again. She had the look of curiosity in her eyes. Nick knew it well by now. "That didn't answer my question at all. So why doncha tell me?" She leaned back and forth in her sitting position on the carpet.

"Because some things are not for the ears of little girls."

"What if I was a boy? That's not fair, Uncle Nick. Boys can't have everything, y'know!"

"Fine, the ears of little kids. The point is, I don't think you're old enough to know the finer details of where I've been, Rory." She pursed her lips and put her tiny hands on her hips. The smiling flowers on her shirt clasehd with her impatient expression. "Don't gimme that look. You're still not gonna hear jack."

"I don't wanna hear jack, I wanna hear about you! Is Jack your friend or somethin'? Does he know where you went?" She crossed and uncrossed her legs, her sneakers shifting awkwardly against the rug. He sighed in frustration and lifted his hands in surrender.

"Fine. I'll tell you. The little tale of Uncle Nick and the mysterious past decade or so. But I'm telling you the censored, kids-only, secret for Rory, don't-tell-daddy-or-I'm-cooked version." Rory's eyebrows rose a bit, but she nodded. She pressed a finger to her mouth to indicate her silence to her parents.

"So, it all started when I woke up in a place called CEDA headquarters..."

"What's a seed-uh?"

"You're not gonna make this easy, huh, kid?" Rory giggled.

"Nah."

_"Why did I get picked for this?" Nick's slightly nervous breaths puffed up against the glass, a small slit with a protection membrane linking him and the scientists on the other end. They all looked at him like he was a machine; a disease curing machine. Only cost would be his dignity and the life he had before this. What life, though? Gambling and drinking and sex, and then frying pans and zombies and hicks. _

_ "You were simply selected from a random selection process generated by the greatest minds in biology." One of them spoke up. He was sifting through papers. This was all business to him. He looked cool. Fine. Almost smug. "Don't resist, you really haven't a choice. We will of course present you with compensation," there was a pause as he sucked in a bit of air. "should you survive the testing." Nick's heart thudded slightly, and it didn't do much often. What the shit was this load of ass that had just been dumped on him by a bunch of labcoats?_

_ "Don't I have any say in the matter?" He punched the glass slightly. A female scientist with her hair in a tight ponytail spoke up this time._

_ "I'm afraid not, sir. You signed papers coming in here permitting us to utilize your condition for any scientific means necessary." Yeah. When they'd been rushed in from the utter chaos outside and were willing to do anything to get away from what was there. "You must participate in these tests for the sake of those you love. Think of it that way. And please refrain from damaging the glass. It's specifically engineered to keep us safe from you." Those Nick loved. A whopping three people and his mother. And even they tested his patience sometimes. _

_ "This is insane. You can't do this to me." A tall man sitting in a chair glanced at him. He looked stern, but relaxed. He had this all under control, it seemed._

_ "Insane, no. And yes, we can do this. It's protocol. Science." The last word slipped out of his mouth like it was greased. "There is research here to be done, so prepare yourself."_

* * *

><p><p>

Francis combed his daughter's hair once she had slipped into her nightgown. Puppies and kittens on it tonight. She seemed quieter than usual. She usually made a fuss before getting into bed, and he had to chase her around a bit to wear her out. But she sat obediently tonight, feet pressed into the soft mint green carpeting. Her eyes seemed far off. He stroked her hair gently, and she moved a bit in her seat.

"You okay, Rory?" She shrugged and sighed. "What's that mean, kiddo?"

"It means ho-hum." She blew some air out from her mouth and flopped back in the seat a bit. "It means I'm confused 'bout some stuff."

"I can't imagine what a little girl would have to be confused about. Pony story writer's block?"

"No..It's about Uncle Nick." She gasped and pressed her small hands over her mouth. Francis cocked an eyebrow and looked down at her in wonder. "I said I wouldn't tell!" She squealed right away, her toes curling nervously. Francis gave her a look. "Da-ddy!"

"You're a bit too young to be hiding things from your dad, kid. Let me tell you that right now."

"Mmmph!" She pressed her lips together tightly and whined. Francis sighed.

"Fine. But!" he brandished the hairbrush. "We're discussing this tomorrow."

"But I said-"

"Look, kid, who's the Daddy here?"

"You are..."

"Good girl."

_Ellis once was playing with Rory when she picked up a pony and held it to his suntanned face. "Lookit, I got a new one!" She grinned, her newly missing tooth standing out like a sore thumb. Ellis smiled picked the toy gently from her grip. She stared, waiting for approval from the mechanic. He'd never been much for looking into her pony obsession, but he liked to encourage her. "She's so pretty!"_

_ "Aw, she sure is. Not as pretty as you, though, I'm afraid." He gently patted her cheek and passed the pony back to her. "What's her name, hm?"_

_ "Nikki!" She chirped. Ellis felt his face scrunch a bit. "You don't like the name?" She cocked her head. Ellis bit his lip, then morphed his face quickly into a guise of comfort._

_ "No. It's a great name!" _


	12. Hunger

_Rochelle tucked her daughter in and sighed. Rory looked very peaceful as she slept, her brown curls falling about her pillow. Her small nose emitted soft sounds of breathing, and her hands laid lazily on top of her stomach. You wouldn't even know she'd have been fairly traumatized just that morning. Her mother placed a cup of water at her bedside (every now and then she got thirsty, and it was better to be prepared than have either her or Francis drag themselves from bed to get one). She felt amazingly large amounts of guilt, her eyes trained on her sleeping child. She probably was still terribly confused by what her father had done._

_ The reporter rested a hand gently on her forehead, smoothing her hair a bit. She hadn't done a thing to deserve such a sight, both before and during the fiasco. Francis had told her so much about Bill and how much he'd done for everyone. How he pretty much made it possible for them to be together as a happy family (flawed, but happy). She came to admire a man she never knew, and to see a stranger vandalizing the only place where she could be with him had to be pretty bad. Not nearly as bad as Francis' actions, but still pretty sad._

_ "Why would someone do that?" she'd said quietly while she sat with her mother earlier. In the midst of looking over her work for the next day, she'd asked what Rory meant. "Hurt Uncle Bill. He's such a nice man." She was looking down, sullen and soft-spoken. "He did so much." She sniffed, tears sliding down every now and then. _

_ Rochelle looked down on her much more peaceful form, and hoped she rested well._

* * *

><p><p>

"...and that's what Uncle Nick told me." Rory looked down, ashamed for revealing everything Nick had told her about his CEDA history in a child's summary. "Please, Daddy, don't tell him you found out! I told him I wouldn't tell!" Francis scratched his beard absentmindedly, feeling bad that his daughter had to be so pressured into telling all. At the same time, however, he felt he needed the information. Nick's strange behavior lately had been putting everyone in a weird place, and he imagined Nick himself was in the weirdest one.

"It's okay, Rory. If I do tell him, I'll take all the blame. I'll tell him I forced it out of you."

"But you kinda did." She stuck her tongue out.

"Shush, kid, I know what I'm doing here." He looked off into the distance, in thought. This was a bit odd, considering Francis never pegged himself as one for intense bouts of thinking. But he often found him surprising himself in the past few years. "We're just really worried about N—Uncle Nick. Get what I'm saying?" She nodded, picking up a rubber ball and bouncing it idly. A child's innocence and level of attentiveness could only battle it out so long before she started to multi-task. "And even if you skipped off and blabbed to me, I doubt he'd get all mad at you. You're one of the few people he actually seems to like."

"How come?" she said, glancing up at her father every few bounces.

"I'm guessing it's because you're cute." He grinned. "Or maybe because he thinks it's nice to talk about things other than...that time." She chewed her bottom lip a bit, knowing that that particular topic put everyone in a bit of unease. But Uncle Nick's was the worst. She knew he had to take medicine just to keep calm when he thought about it.

"So...when I asked him..do you think he got mad?" She looked sad again. Francis felt imminent guilt swooping in on him.

"Nah." He ruffled her hair. "He might have gotten a bit frustrated, but I wouldn't say mad."

"Right." she said, and nodded as if to assure herself doubly. "Anyway..if you do tell Uncle Nick, can it be when I'm not around and stuff?" she gave him a pitiful look. How could the man say no to her? He nodded "Thanks, Daddy."

"Yeah, but you owe me. I want breakfast in bed every day for a year." She giggled, and he patted her on the head.

_Nick was fed well on the first day. Looking back on it, he assumed it was to make him unsuspecting to what was going to happen after the meal. Government-hired chefs made foods he hadn't seen since before the infection: small portions of roasted chicken, mashed potatoes, steamed vegetables, bottles of good wine. He was eating a piece of roast beef when the protocol-inclined man from earlier entered. He sat on the other site of the glass. Nick glanced up for a moment, but the hunger that had clawed at him for months had him instinctively keep eating. After a brief time of watching the gambler, he clicked a pen from his pocket and began scrawling onto a clipboard filled with papers. Nick raised his eyes and stopped chewing._

_ "You mind, four-eyes?" The scientist didn't look up. He just kept writing quickly, like he was being timed for notes. "Hey. Professor. You got a problem with how I eat?" He sighed, and looked up, as if he didn't expect to be noticed writing fervently while the subject of the notes ate. _

_ "I'm doing research."_

_ "On me eating like a pig." He adjusted his glasses, face unmoving and stony as ever._

_ "Hm. You see, sir, we have to note certain things about your behavior to best further our research and chances of a positive experimental outcome. It's protocol." Nick's mouth formed a line, unamused with this continual referral to whatever the "protocol" was. Especially by this guy in particular. The conman spooned some potatoes into his mouth, and continued to stare him down. "Well, as long as we're speaking, may I ask you some questions?" Nick rolled his eyes._

_ "Go nuts." The man cleared his throat, and messed with his glasses again. Seemed to be a bad habit. This guy probably had lots of bad habits, Nick figured._

_ "When was the last time you ate, and what?" He chewed with a bit more anger._

_ "A day ago. You fed me some weird nutrient paste."_

_ "Ah, yes yes. Right. And how did you digest? Did you have any bathroom problems? Any stomach pains?"_

_ "Yes. Hunger pains. From eating glue for a week."_

_ "Nutrition paste, sir." Nick rolled his eyes, and turned his view back to his food. He figured that was more worth his time._

_ "I know what I said. Anything else you want to ask me as long as you've got me sitting here? You sure you didn't drug this."_

_ "I assure you it's completely fine, sir. We would notify you if we were drugging you for any reason at all. This is purely for your pleasure and to help you be at your best physical state for when we run our tests. They begin at five in the morning tomorrow, just so you know." He did know. He'd gotten about five papers, two nurses, five CEDA scientists, and one janitor notifying him over the course of the day. _

_ "I know. Thanks for reminding me, though." He said, bitterness dripping from his words. _

_ "Have you been experiencing any weird pains or aches?"_

_ "You guys are giving me a pain in my as-" The intercom beeped, and a female voice came through, crackling and loud._

_ "Would Doctor Fredricks please return to Research Room 28B? I repeat, Dr. Fredricks to Reasearch 28B. Thank you." A click signaled a hang-up on her end, and the labcoat-wearing man stood up on his side of the screen, tucking the white chair he was sitting in next to a table filled with even more papers._

_ "I'm terribly sorry, but I have to leave. Business to attend to. Remember your tests tomorrow." He looked at Nick over the rim of his glasses. Grey eyes stared him down with a weird intensity. "Please enjoy your meal." he finished quietly, and exited._

* * *

><em> Nick had a feeling he was being insincere about that last part.<em>

Ellis stared down at his coffee, feeling suddenly full of disdain and the thought of ingesting anything. The brief story that Francis had told him just made him beyond uncomfortable. And that was without the nasty details that Nick had probably kept hidden from Rory. He sighed and looked back up at Francis. "You sure what she said is true?"

"My kid ain't one thing," he said, raising his own cup, clearly feeling less upset about the matter than Ellis. "and that's a liar. Get that straight first." He sipped, the mechanic staring forward with a look of slightly emptiness.

"Yeah, but...Nick's...I dunno. Maybe he's the liar." Francis shrugged.

"He's your friend, brother. You know him better than me. Whether or not he's a liar, well, that'd be up to you, Ro and Coach." He took another sip. "This coffee tastes like crap."

"Then stop drinkin' it!"

"I paid for it, I'll drink it." Ellis smiled slightly. What a philosophy. "Don't gimme that look, ya redneck." he said jokingly. "You're not touching yours?"

"When I pay for it, I'll drink it." He shoved it towards Francis. "M'not quite in the mood for this right now, anyway." He sighed, and his face fell a bit. Things were quiet for a while, and Francis drank as if nothing had been discussed. Nothing serious, anyway. Finally, the biker spoke up.

"You know what you gotta do, right?"

"Yup."

_"Bile." the woman at the water cooler said. "You're kidding." _

_ "Nope. He said they used to throw it at the zombies and make them fight each other so they didn't have to shoot.." Stevens sipped from his cup solemnly. The long talk he'd had with Louis over lunch break led to a discussion about his fighting during the infection days. Stevens had lived in a boarded-up shelter with a few other families. Some of the men had been defenses, shooting off zombies that came too close while others hoarded food and rationed it in hopes of being saved. Stevens helped with the rationing. He didn't ever see the mutations. After talking to Louis, he was much happier that he hadn't._

_ "Insane. I mean, my dad was paranoid. He flew us out to some remote home he'd bought in the north the second he heard of the infections. It was freezing but, he saved us." She said. "The zombies couldn't really take the cold, it seems." A small laugh slipped out. But how could one laugh about such a thing?_

_ "I can't imagine what else he'd seen." he said. She frowned._

_ "He lives with it." They exchanged guilty looks._


End file.
